350 LAND AND LA&OR. 



making these great bolts, and I visited seven or eight 

 establishments, that might properly be classed as fac- 

 tories, thus employing women. Their earnings do 

 not exceed $1 25 a week. 



ee In this way mothers, daughters, and mere chil- 

 dren toil and slave on from year to year indeed, one 

 man told me nails had been made here for over a cen- 

 tury in this way. How they exist is a mystery to me. 

 They live in hovels, they are poorly fed, and poorly 

 clad. They marry early, and several girls not over 

 seventeen were pointed out to me as mothers of chil- 

 dren two and three years of age. The men have an 

 unmuscular look, most of them are 'very pale and 

 lean and leaden eyed/ The small nailers are not pro- 

 tected by the English Factory act, and they work in 

 their fathers' shops sometimes until late at night. 

 The time to see the nailers at work is Friday night. 

 The sharp din of the hammer on the anvil, and the 

 dull rapid thud of the ' oliver/ as it flattened the 

 heads of the nails and spikes, still rings in my ears 

 from last night. I can see the bright sparks from the 

 forge, the red hot nails clattering down to join their 

 cooler brethren, the bending forms of the men, the 

 women, and the girls, little children creeping into the 

 clattering, scintillating nail shops, for the sake of 

 warmth, and every now and then the red flames from 

 the forges illuminating the scene and making more 

 distinct the weird forms of these shadowy creatures, 

 doomed to a never ending industrial treadmill. 



"In some cases I found mothers and three, and 

 even four, daughters at the forge. Many of the nailers 

 actually starve, and cases of the deepest sorrow are 



